Fire Toxicity

Abstract

Interest in the toxic effects of fires has been rapidly increasingly. This book will raise the important issues of the types of toxic effluents that fires produce and the different methods that exist to assess fire toxicity, using animal exposure studies, laboratory scale or large scale generation of fire effluents, as well as the effects from actual fires. Further chapters will discuss the effects of toxicity on its victims, international standards and how different materials and the fire environment can influence the generation of toxic products. Fire toxicity will be relevant for professionals in the fire community, including fire fighters, fire investigators, regulators, fire safety engineers and fire-safe material formulators. It will also be suitable for researchers in industry or academia.
Key Features: investigates the controversial subject of toxic effluents as the cause of the majority of fire deaths and injuries; describes the different types of toxic effluents and the specific fires that they produce, their physiological effects and methods for generation; provides an overview of national and international fire safety regulations including current and proposed regulations such as a standardized framework for prediction of fire gas toxicity.

Contents: Part 1 Introduction: Introduction to fire toxicity; Fire Scenarios and combustion conditions. Part 2 Harmful effects of fire effluents: Hazards from smoke and irritants; Asphyxiant components of fire effluents; Effects of fire effluents on fire victims. Part 3 Biological assessment of fire toxicity: Experimental methods in combustion toxicology; Animal exposure studies; Application of human animal exposure studies to human fire safety; In vitro biological toxicity assessments for fire combustion products; A Combined fire smoke and lung model test equipment. Part 4 Toxicity assessment using chemical analysis: Sampling and measurement of toxic fire effluents; Bench-scale generation of fire effluents; Large scale generation and characterisation of fire effluents; Effects of the material and fire conditions on toxic product yields; Estimation of toxicity during burning of common materials. Part 5 National and international fire safety regulations: Prescriptive regulations and tests considering the toxicity of fire effluents; An international standardised framework for prediction of fire gas toxicity. Part 6 Numerical simulation of fires and their hazards: Computer simulation of fire hazards and evacuation; Toxic hazard calculation models for use with fire effluent data; Modelling fire growth and toxic gas formation.

About the Author
Dr. Stec and Prof. Hull have worked together on fire toxicity for the last 6 years, currently in the Centre for Fire and Hazard Science at University of Central Lancashire, UK. Anna Stec is a lecturer in Fire Chemistry and Toxicology. Her work has focused on quantification of toxic hazards in fires, understanding the factors that affect fire gas toxicity, and the relationship between the physiological effects of the concentration and dose of different toxicants. She has conducted detailed comparisons on the yields of fire gases and other combustion products using a selection of different small-scale fire models in order to predict the effects of fire exposures to humans. Dr Stec has been designated as the UK s Principal Expert on fire chemistry, and an active participant at the ISO TC 92 Fire threat to people and environment meetings. Richard Hull is a Professor of Chemistry and Fire Science. His work has focused on fire retardant mechanisms, fire effluent toxicity and fire science. With another contributor, Prof David Purser, he has been pivotal in the development of the steady state tube furnace as the first internationally recognised standard for the assessment of fire gas toxicity (ISO TS 19700); as one of the only methods capable of replicating real fire conditions on a bench-scale, this has led to its growing acceptance, particularly for performance-based fire assessment.